Clinton,Trump cement status with emphatic wins

DONALD Trump and Hillary Clinton carved out dominant positions in their party nominating races on Super Tuesday, marching ever closer to a scorched-earth general election clash.

Trump swamped his rivals by piling up seven wins across the nation, demonstrating broad appeal for his anti-establishment movement. Clinton also had a strong night, winning seven states and showing her strength with minorities in the South.

Trump won across the conservative South in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, but also captured more moderate Massachusetts and Vermont.

“This has been an amazing night,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He vowed to be a “unifier” and to go after Clinton with a singular focus once the GOP race eventually winds up.

But Trump’s GOP rivals vowed to fight on. Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, the biggest single prize of the night, and added Oklahoma and Alaska. And Florida Senator, Marco Rubio, finally landed his first win of the 2016 season in the Minnesota Republican caucuses.

Trump’s victories suggested that he did not pay a significant price for a controversy that flared in recent days over his initial failure to disavow David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, during a CNN interview, and disputes over his business record and positions on immigration.

And time is running out for the panicking Republican establishment to deny the billionaire the nomination, amid fears his brand of volatile anti-immigrant rhetoric could cost the party not just the White House, but the Senate.

CNN projects that Trump has so far won 233 delegates on Super Tuesday, well ahead of Cruz with 188 and Rubio with 90. That gives the billionaire a total of 315 delegates in the overall race, compared to 205 for Cruz and 106 for Rubio. A total of 1,237 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination.